NIAW & the Dollars and $ense of Family Building

National Infertility Awareness Week - April 24 through April 30

To continue Busting the Myths of Infertility, in this case the myth that ART treatment is covered by insurance, I decided to participate in the Dollars and $ense of Family Building blog carnival hosted by Lori at Write Mind, Open Heart.

1. Consider your now or future children as adults, and consider the fact that you had to spend money to either conceive them or make them part of your family. What effect do you think the latter will have on the former one day? What, do you think, your grown children might feel about the funds it took to create your family?
• All I can do is imagine myself and my reaction in that type of situation. If it were me, I think I would think it was totally worth it! :-) Joking aside, if nothing else, they may think that it is crazy, but I hope my children see how very much they were wanted.
2. How did/would you handle it if your child asks you, “Mom, how much did I cost?” How would you answer at age 7? At age 18?
• I think if my kids asked how much they'd cost, I'd be pretty honest with them and tell them. (That goes for the price of the twin's NICU stay as well.) I'd end with the "you were worth every single penny" statement also.
3. When calculating the costs of your family building, what do you include? The direct costs are easy (such as RE fees for a cycle or homestudy fees), but what about fees that didn’t directly lead to your child’s existence in your life, such as cycles that didn’t work, adoption outreach avenues that didn’t work, failed adoptions, avenues that were explored (and that cost something) but not pursued, etc.?
• In our case, most of the costs for our family building were directly related to doctors and procedures. In total, we did 3 IUIs, 5 fresh cycles of IVF, a laparoscopy surgery, and 2.5 FETs. Along with that, I did a year of acupuncture and took a wide variety of herbs and supplements recommended by the acupuncturist before the twins were born. None of what we did, with the exception of the IUIs and the lap, were covered by insurance. None. The IUIs and the meds for IUIs only were covered at 50%. The laparoscopy was actually the cheapest thing I did throughout the entire process. I spent a whopping $250 for it.
• I include everything--the unsuccessful and successful attempts--when calculating the total costs of our family building. (I've not sat down and calculated the exact amount we spent. I am somewhat afraid to really. I know that the amount we claim every year on our taxes makes me sick to my stomach, and that is only a single year's total. I'd probably have a stroke if I knew the entirety of our expenses. Sigh. I wish it didn't take so much from our lives financially to build our family.)
• The other "expense" I also include is the emotional cost of our infertility journey. It was a long hard road. I could have done without the emotional toll on our lives, thank you very much. I'd do it all again if it was the only way to get to my boys, but it would have been nice had we not had to in the first place. Does that make sense?
4. If two children in a family “cost” different amounts, should that have any significance?
• The short answer is no, it doesn't have any significance.
• The long answer is that I don't see our family in terms of "cost" per child. Instead, I see the money we spent on our ART treatments as the "cost" of creating our family. In that respect, it doesn't really matter which child/children cost more.
5. To what extent have finances determined the family-building decisions you have made? How have you able to balance financial considerations against other factors such as medical, ethical, emotional…?
• In our case, we didn't really establish a maximum amount we'd spend on creating our family. For us, we set out to reach our goal. In doing so, we juggled whatever we could to continue funding our treatments. I got very good at getting creative, especially with the last several IVFs. I researched credit cards with zero percent interest rates and used them. We had very little in savings for a long time. We even lived on hot dogs for a while to save money. In the beginning, though, we took out a second loan on our house to help finance our family building.
• I think because we were paying for everything ourselves, we were probably more aggressive in our treatment, especially in the number of embryos we transferred, than we might have been had our treatment been covered by insurance. In total, we transferred 21 embryos. (OMG, I just counted that. I hadn't realized we transferred that many.) Only transferring one at a time wasn't something we could financially justify. We had to give ourselves optimal chances to achieve pregnancy because of the financial strain.
6. Has institutional and governmental support for certain family-building paths impacted your choices? For example, ART being covered by insurance, tax deductions for adoption expenses, etc.
• We got very little help financing for our treatments. Like I said before, IVF was not covered by insurance for us. 3 IUIs and the meds for IUIs only were covered at 50%. That is it.
• We did take advantage of itemizing our medical expenses on our taxes and managed to get a hefty tax refund each year, but that was really all we got as far as support. :-/

Visit Write Mind Open Heart for more perspectives on the Dollars and $ense of Family Building and to add your own link to the blog hop by May 1, should you want to contribute your thoughts.

NIAW - Bust a Myth: A Higher-power Is Telling Me That I Should Not Be a Parent.

Myth: A higher-power is telling you that you should not be a parent.

Is.aac and I have been in the trying to conceive business for a long time now. We've been lucky, and have been blessed with three beautiful boys; however, even with our success, I still have moments when I struggle with the basic idea of this myth. The question of "What if all of this was God's way of telling me I shouldn't be a parent?" has haunted me off and on throughout the entire journey.


We started trying to have children in the spring of 2004. I remember the excitement I had when I finally threw out the last pack of birth control pills. I was 32 and totally ready to embark on this new journey in life.


I figured that having a baby would be just as easy for us as it was for so many others I knew. Only for us, it of course wasn't easy.

"Maybe you're not supposed to have children," said a family member after one of our losses.

"Maybe you're supposed to focus on "parenting" your students and not a child of your own," said a coworker after we'd been trying for nearly two and a half years.

People don't hold back opinions on the topic of baby making, whether you'd like them to or not. I mean, everyone is an expert, right? I think the speakers thought they were being supportive, or at least I hope that was their misguided intention. It didn't fail, though; time and again what was said seemed to radiate around the idea that I was somehow tampering with fate or God's will by moving further and further into treatments. Ultimately, I'd be so much happier if I just followed God's plan. Well, according to them I'd be happier.


At first the thought that maybe I wasn't meant to be a parent never entered my mind. It was easy to ignore what was said and focus on my quest to motherhood. (I have to admit that I vividly remember every hurtful word uttered by loved ones. Each scarred my already wounded heart. I didn't really believe them, exactly, but the damage was done anyway.)


The miscarriages brought some doubt. Am I really doing the right thing?

Then I got pregnant and it stuck.


With twins!


But there were complications, bed rest, cerclages, and prematurity.


There were brain bleeds and surgeries and wondering if my sweet little boys would live.


With all of that drama, the questions came back to haunt me: What if a higher-power was telling me that I shouldn't be a parent? What if because I didn't listen to that simple message I caused all of the problems for my amazing twin boys?


Those words shared as support? as judgement when I didn't want them, were now used for torture and fueled my guilt and self-doubt.

I shouldn't have had kids and now look what I did to them...

It is such an awful but very real thought of mine during that time.

---

   The myth Busted:   Infertility isn't a message from God telling those inflicted that they are somehow not worthy to parent. It is, like any other disease, is an incorrectly functioning part of the body--plain and simple.
Those who suffer from infertility deserve to be treated with the latest technology without judgement just like those with any other disease are treated.

You would never consider telling someone with some other disease that "God wants you to suffer," or "God wants you to die." Those words would be unforgivable and so very untrue! By telling someone with infertility that his or her disease is a sign that he/she should not have kids, you are doing the very same thing. It is just cruel and hateful to cause more unwarranted suffering to an already painful situation.

As Resolve states, "Infertility is a disease of the reproductive system.  It does not discriminate and affects all races, religions, men and women equally and people all over the world...Parenthood is attainable, if that is truly your goal.  You may or may not be fortunate enough to have a biological connection to your child, but if you want the experience of being a parent, you can achieve that dream."

---

It was that ridiculous myth from above that exacerbated all the turmoil in my life.

I believed them.

I lived them.

Those tiny words held such power over me for such a very long time.

Those of you who have been around a while here know how hard I've worked to deal with the guilt and doubt from the time that surrounds the boys' birth. It truly has been a long, painful process. For the most part, I have put those feelings behind me.

I finally realize that I didn't break the rules when I got pregnant and had children. I may not be overly religious, but I do believe God wasn't telling me not to parent through my infertility journey. If anything, God was showing me what I am made of...that I am stronger than I ever imagined.

It feels good to know I truly deserve parenthood just as much as anyone else.


And maybe I'll even be pretty good at it. :-)

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For more information on infertility go here on Resolve's website.

For more information on Resolve's National Infertility Awareness Week® and the Bust a Myth Movement click here.

In The End, We Got What We Needed

If there was one thing about our lives that I wish I could change, it would be the frequency in which we need to see medical professionals. I have a love/hate relationship with them on the best of days, so you can imagine how I feel about them on days when there are problems.

I said a few posts back that I am trying to transition the boys to the state agency that deals with children who have special needs (they qualify under their CP diagnosis). Both boys still need physical therapy and Sh.awn will need occupational therapy. They haven't received formal therapy (just what Is.aac and I do with them) since they aged out of Early Intervention at the end of October.

The transition to the state agency shouldn't have been that big of a deal and should have been facilitated to some degree by Early Intervention. Unfortunately, our case coordinator at Early Intervention (our 5th coordinator, mind you, in the 2.5 years we were involved with EI, and only the 2nd one I had ever met during that time) decided that she no longer wished to work for the agency and quit in early September of 2010. Again, there shouldn't have been an issue, our cases should have then been transferred to another case manager so we could have our exit meeting when the boys aged out of the program at the end of October. Instead of transferring our cases to another manager, someone just closed the boys' cases with an "no resolution" label and filed them both away.

Leaving us without an exit plan/evaluation review/or anything.

At first, I expected the case manager we had to contact us to do our review of goals.

I learned in late November that she had quit and that we had been transferred to someone else.

In the second week of December, after I still not heard anything from EI, I called yet again to see what was going on. That is when I learned that our cases were closed with no resolution.

There was to be no transition to the state agency with help from EI.

Joy.

I have been playing phone tag with the state agency and doctors ever since. It has royally sucked.

We seem to luck out and get assigned to people who have no common sense every. single. time.

Let me just run down a few of the highlights:

• I lodged a formal complaint about the way our cases at EI were handled. (It is amazing how nice people were to me all of a sudden!)
• It took the neurologist's office, who had to write a therapy prescription, SIX FULL WEEKS to fax said prescription to the state agency only to find that the state agency never received them.
• 3 phone calls later, the state agency said they had received Sh.awn's prescription twice, but nothing for Ja.son. (The neurology office says they faxed both and that the state agency is wrong. Whatever.)
• When Ja.son's prescription was finally faxed, it was apparently faxed to another person in the office, not the person expecting it.
• Another call to the neurology office gave me the name of who the prescription was actually faxed to--get this. The woman at the state agency waiting for our fax shared the same freaking office as the man who ultimately received it. WTF? Apparently, even the fax machine the script was sent to is shared by both of them yet she couldn't find it?!!?
• Finally the paperwork was moved to the second stage and was sent to the therapy team.
• Keep in mind that the boys always have appointments on the same days, and I always call doctors/the state agency in reference to both of them, Sh.awn's paperwork managed to get to the therapy unit about 4 weeks ago, while Ja.son's was sent two weeks ago.
• I've called the therapy unit office 4 times to set up an evaluation appointment for the boys. I've had to leave messages every time.
• The therapy unit called to set up only Ja.son's appointment.
• Sh.awn's could not be made because his therapy prescription had expired 3 FUCKING days earlier. (Me upset? Nahhhhh.)
• I.Lost.My.Shit.
• I asked the woman from the therapy unit four or five times which doctor had to write the script for therapy. She swore it had to be his primary physician--who has not had anything to do with the referral to the state agency at all. I called that doctor and told her what I need a script to say, but...
• ...you know how this is going to go, right?
• Yes, of course they needed the script from the neurologist. Idiots.
• Good thing I had figured that would happen and had already called the neurologist's office and begged them to send an updated script.
• The idiots at the therapy unit got a script from both the doctors just for good measure.
• I called the therapy unit back. Had to leave a message.
• They finally called me back and now Sh.awn finally has his own appointment.

This is why the state has no money!

They make everything a hundred times more difficult than it has to be. If people would just use common sense and actually think, we would all be better off!

Ugh. People can be so stupid.

---

And don't even get me started on the drama it takes to set up a neurosurgery appointment (just for follow ups/and CT scans). That is still in the works, too. I've been waiting two weeks (not quietly either) for that...

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Once again we made the trek to the mall to visit our favorite springtime character...the Easter Bunny! The boys were abuzz with excitement on the way there. We had talked the outing up, and both seemed to look forward to meeting the big guy in white. Ja.ckson affirmed his agreement with his steady snores.

We were all set. Nothing could go wrong!

That is, nothing could go wrong until we saw the BIG BUNNY. Yikes. He was actually okay from afar. As we waited in line, the boys seemed just fine.

Just in case, we had decided that this would be a family picture (our first!) in an effort to make the big boys a bit more comfortable.

Ja.son actually was okay at first. Here he is sporting a sort of deer caught in headlights look. He wasn't thrilled, exactly, but he was giving this experience a shot. Sh.awn, however, was not okay. Notice his look of terror the moment he sat on the bunny's lap. I think he might be saying, "Get me off!" over and over again to Is.aac in this first shot.

Now this one seemed to catch us all off guard. Ja.son had now decided that Sh.awn must be on to something, so he joined in on the crying fest. I may be telling him that it was okay when the photographer snapped this picture. Sh.awn was caught taking another glance at the scary bunny, and the hysterics started up again. Ja.ck has started to fidget some, too, what with all the noise and all. I must say, though, that Is.aac is looking pretty good!

For this last shot, Is.aac and I have decided that crying will be the best we're going to get for the pictures, so we might as well smile and look good ourselves amid all the chaos. We're used to it; I think it may be the story of our lives now! :-)

I don't know why, but I love shots like this. They are real...and that makes them all the more special to me. Besides, if all of our pictures were perfect, what would I have to embarrass them with when they bring home their girlfriends? (Not that I would ever do such a thing...heh heh.)

We hope you have a wonderful day!



Lazy Day Saturday

My mom was nice enough to take the big boys today so Is.aac and I could relax and get some rest. Yeah. I heart my mom. She is always doing awesome things like this for us. So, we are currently in bed. Before you get too excited, I have a sleeping baby on my chest and my husband is sawing logs next to me. Interestingly, even with all the log sawing, he still claims he "can't sleep" and made me turn off the television. Boo.

Because I am too lazy to get up and head to the living room (it is my lazy day too, damn it!), I am lying here pouting and blogging.

Husbands stink sometimes. Ahem.

---

I am still battling the effects of hormones. It's hard to judge what is "normal" and what is maybe more than the so called baby blues. I don't think I have hit the depression stage...but how do I know for sure? I didn't know last time until I was finally feeling a bit better-some five or six months later.

And frankly, try as I might to not compare this experience to the boys' birth, I still find myself doing so. The odd part is that my only reference point from then is so skewed that it only confuses me when I do compare it to now. Sigh.

I think Is.aac is working through his own baby blues. It started when I was pregnant and has gotten worse since the baby arrived. I do hope as things settle, he is able to relax a bit more.

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It would be nice if I could just turn my brain off for a week or two.

---

After we pick the boys up later, I think we will head to the mall to see the Easter Bunny. I almost didn't even realize that Easter was this weekend!

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ja.ckson's Video

Makes me cry every single time...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

If you're having trouble viewing the video, click here.

When I Get Bigger

My weekend full of taking care of the boys by myself (I have to lift them at various times), having visitors, and trying to straighten the house before said visitors has returned quite a bit of bleeding and soreness. Sigh. I even broke down and took some pain meds. I really did think I was being careful. My body, however, says I wasn't careful enough.

---

The boys are outside playing in the backyard with Is.aac. The next door neighbors are having a large party, including loud mariachi music and a bouncy house. The larger kids are playing soccer on the other side of the yard.

Ja.son has been listening to them play as he digs in the dirt.

Sh.awn has been getting his grove on with the music and is dancing for a while.

Today has been one of those weepy days. Everything seems to bring tears to my eyes, especially when I hear one of my beautiful boys say, "When I get bigger, Mommy, maybe I can kick a ball, too?"

My eyes haven't really stopped leaking since.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

So Proud of Their New Role

Big Brother, Ja.son, showing off his new t-shirt.

Loving on his baby brother

Keeping watch over him

Big Brother, Sh.awn, is so excited to finally hold his brother (it took him a bit to warm up to the idea)

and give him lots of hugs

Makes my heart swell with love to see them all together!

Friday Night Leftovers - Where Does the Time Go?

Still having trouble coming up with a coherent post. My brain is officially mush!

• I have been trying to post something for the last three days, but can never seem to get started. I swear some sort of time vacuum has aimed it's suction directly at our house. Before I know it, it is midnight and I am too exhausted to think straight!
• Things have been quiet around here until today. We've had two different sets of visitors today. There was no time for a catnap when the boys were down for their naps. Whoa. Tired doesn't begin to cover it.
• Ja.son has started to have some nasty night terrors again. He'd had them regularly a year or so ago, and then they tapered to once a month or so. Now they are back to at least five times a week. Ugh.
• Sh.awn is still trying to banish the baby to the nursery when Ja.ck cries. On the plus side, he has started to kiss him and stroke his head (well and poke at his eyes). Baby steps, right?
• I need to write a post about my amazing Sh.awn and Ja.son. I'll do that soon. For now, I'll say I've had serious trouble transitioning them from Early Intervention to CCS where they should be receiving therapy services now. Due to a series of f'ups on both EI's, the doctors, and CCS's parts, we are still waiting to get them officially enrolled. I've been working on this since DECEMBER!!!! and still have not finished. Ugh. It has been a nightmare. Don't worry, though. I am nothing if not a persistent pain in the ass to those who don't do what they are supposed to do. (I even had one tell me that I needed to call him back at the end of the week to remind him about something he was supposed to do. WTF? Why should I have to remind him to do his damn job?!? Stupidity makes me livid.)
• Ja.ck, or Tank as I affectionately call him, is 10 pounds, 10 ounces as of Wednesday. He already wears size 3 month clothes. He drinks between 2-3 ounces of formula every 2-3 hours with an occasional power ounce thrown in every so often for good measure. Have I said how much he amazes me?
• I know just how lucky I am to have my little family.
• I am planning on having family portraits taken. I am so excited. I can't wait!
• I am working on a new header/website for the family blog. Can't exactly call it what it is called now seeing how we have 3 on our team now instead of 2.
• I am also working on Ja.ck's birth video.
• Both the header and the video are taking forever because my computer is being challenging. Grrr.
• It is when my computer is being challenging that I realize just how much I rely on it! I heart my computer. I wonder if I can talk my husband into getting me a new one soon?
• I finally got through to my district office to get paperwork for Ja.ck's insurance, disability, and to figure out my return date. I am so excited. I am off of work until June 9. I go back until the end of the school year, but get this. School ends on June 16. Score!
• Ok. I give you permission to hate me...I fit into a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans yesterday. ;-) They were tight, and I am still pretty doughy, but still. I am happy. :-)
• My body may not know how to get pregnant on its own, but it sure does know how to return to "normal" afterward. That is something to celebrate!
• Is.aac is going with his brother to see Prince in concert on Thursday. I am so jealous. This will be the second time he has gone to a Prince concert without me. So not right. Hmph.
• The BIL and SIL who had the adoption situation fall into their laps are still moving forward in the right direction. The birth mom is now 32 weeks (baby is estimated around 3.5 pounds). They go to pre-register the birth mom in the hospital tomorrow. I am happy for them.
• They are having a girl.
• I am wildly jealous of them, too.
• Funny how you can be happy with your own life and yet jealous of people who may have something you do not.
• My neighbor, No.ah's mom, came by yesterday to see the baby. We talked a bit and shed a few tears. I just feel so badly for her and her family. Things have been tough on them since No.ah's death. She was out of work for quite some time, so money is tight. All the stress they were under has caught up to them, and they are now fighting a lot. They also had trouble filing their taxes. Apparently someone filed using No.ah's social security number. My neighbor actually had to go down to the social security office and prove that she was No.ah's mother. It makes me sick to think about how painful that had to be for them. In the end, they had to file a fraud report and have it investigated. It took somewhere around a month to clear up the issue and get their refund.

Oh, I don't want to forget these two little gems...

• Today, the 15th, is my 4th Blogoversary! I can't believe it has been that long. I love this community!

and...

• Monday the 18th is my 39th birthday. Yikes! My mom is giving me BlogHer tickets as a present. Look out San Diego...here I come! (Anyone else going? Let me know!)

For more leftovers, stop by Sippy Cups Are Not For Starbucks!

Wordless Wednesday - OMG There's a Real Live Baby in My House!

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I Never Knew

There so much about having a baby I never knew, so much that our past experience hid and prevented me from enjoying and living.

These eleven days with baby Ja.ck have highlighted all those little things we missed. Contrary to what I thought, instead of feeling a sense of healing and peace from a typical birth experience, the pain from the boys' early days has come flooding back.

I didn't know what it was like to announce that I had a baby and have people genuinely happy because of the birth. With the boys, not many people bothered to tell us congratulations; those who did held a look of fear in their eyes when they said it. There wasn't joy at the announcement of Sh.awn's and Ja.son's births, only sadness.

I didn't know how everyone would flood to the hospital to visit and celebrate the new life. After the boys were born, I was there for two weeks, yet I had no visitors outside of my mom. People didn't know what to say, so they stayed away. During the 15 excruciatingly long NICU weeks, only a handful of people ever got to see the boys in person, and that includes close family members.

I didn't know what it was like for me to be the focus of the medical profession, to have many more checks and visits from doctors and nurses than the baby did, or to be the one with the wires and tubes. The baby had a daily weight check and a few temperature checks. That is it. Blows my mind.

I didn't really know what it was like to stare at my baby's face as he slept...

with the freedom to hold him for as long as I wanted without eyes and monitors scrutinizing my every move...

to not have to ask for permission to even touch him.

I didn't know what it was like to feel the immediate connection with my baby. It took me weeks months to really bond with Sh.awn and Ja.son. It has taken me years to forgive myself for that. If I am honest, maybe I never have...

I didn't really know that a newborn displays a whole host of emotions on his face while he sleeps. (I love watching his face change as he sleeps. Oh my, he is such a handsome boy.) There was always something obstructing my view of the twins; I missed seeing much of the their faces for months.

I didn't know what it was like to not live in a constant state of overwhelming fear.

I didn't really know how HUGE a mere eleven weeks and one day would be to the health of a baby,

that the reality we lived for so, so long was that extreme.

How could I know?

This week has been hard not because Ja.ck is a challenge (he isn't), or because I am sleep deprived (which is to be expected), or even because I am battling some sort of bug.
This week has been hard because I am struggling with the unfairness of it all--of how I still hate that the big boys didn't get an easier start to life, of how things could have been...maybe should have been. It makes me sad actually.

The "loss" of that time is heightened, haunting me.

I didn't really know how much prematurity had stolen from all of us.

Yes, I imagine that some of these feelings are compounded by the hormonal changes I'm experiencing. Some of it is guilt's ugly head rearing again even though I have tried over and over again to knock that beast to the ground.

But a lot of it, I think, is that I didn't really know.

When I didn't really know what others experience, somehow I didn't feel like I missed out on so much. I fooled myself into believing that our experience couldn't have been all that different than everyone else. A baby is a baby, right?

Sure, it was obvious to some degree that what we went through during those days was a far cry from "normal" even for a preemie birth.

But, I didn't really know.

Now that I do, it just plain hurts all the more.

Thoughts That Probably Are Nowhere Near As Meaningful As They Seem At 2 AM

• Today was day 2 at home. It was on the harder side. I'm pretty sore, and I think I totally overdid it yesterday. I am trying to be very cautious today. Isn't always easy to do!


• We've decided that Is.aac will focus on the big boys and I'll focus on the Tank. That has helped some. :-)


• Yes, he is a Tank. He chugs 70 ml of formula every one and a half to two hours. "Chugs" may not even be the best description. Think...downing a shot of alcohol...yes, that is about right.


• He lost exactly 7 ounces in the hospital and had already started gaining it back while we were still there.


• Apparently the nurses weren't used to that?!? Is that not the norm? Ahem.


• He doesn't fit into his newborn clothes or diapers. They tried to squeeze him into nb diapers the first day, but when he kept leaking through!! they finally gave us some size 1s.


• It still blows my mind to think all that BABY came out of me. Holy hell. I can't imagine how he fit in here.


• His feet are freaking huge. I just want to gobble them up. :-)


• Ja.son wants me to take Ja.ckson to the nursery and leave him there.


• Sh.awn just tries to pretend he isn't here at all.


• Plus poor Sh.awn gets so upset and dissolves into a puddle of tears every time Tank cries. It is funny but so sad to watch him!


• Ja.son did "hold" and "feed" the baby today, so that was cute.


• So...um i guess we can call our homecoming a success? Lol


• Both the big boys do think the baby burping/farting is hilarious though.


• I've done a lot of sleeping today. No controlling it, my body just says sleep NOW! and there is not much I can do about it but sleep!


• I am sure that is the best thing for a person like me. If my body didn't make me, I probably wouldn't sleep at all.


• TMI- I did poop though. Yeah. Glad that is over. Even more glad that we know my body is working to some degree.


• Is.aac is hanging in there. He's tired, which translates to grumpy. That is not a good combo with my hormones.


• We had a bit of a scuffle over what I can/can't do. He just wants to do it all to be "helpful." That just hurts my feelings because it feels like he doesn't think I can do anything. The grump he is sporting also means he hasn't been the nicest when he "helps" me, so I have shed more than a few tears. (gotta love hormones) We are working through it though.


• I am now up because Ja.son is having some sort of night terror. He's been talking and hollering for about 20 minutes now. He won't be consoled, so I've sent myself into my bedroom so I can try to not hear him. It isn't working. Poor baby. He's had his whole world turn upside down this weekend. No wonder he has nightmares.


• Time for more percoset. People, why did none of you tell me about these "after pains"? I've had contractions pretty regularly since Thursday! Not. Fun. And you know what? One percoset, per the perscription's directions, Does.Not.Cut.It. Taking two is making my nice full bottle of lovely drugs disappear before my eyes. That is making me all twitchy. I needs me some percoset. :-(

Released!

Now waiting for pain mess and the boys!



Let's get this party started! :-)

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Released!

OB was here. I've been freed. Woooohoooo!

Just waiting for Jackson's doctor and then we are outta this place. I can't wait!

It will be so nice to be our own home and back together again. I've missed my boys something fierce. And from what my mom's been hearing, they've really missed us too. :-)




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Cruising Along!

Discharge will likely happen tomorrow. We are both doing well. I've been up and walking around a lot more today. It still isn't fun, but it's not too bad this time compared to last.

Got some pics taken of the baby. Go to bellababyphotography.com and use the password 0330jackpez for more! :-)


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